Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says he's launched a probe to find out how blueprints for a new military counter-terrorism unit ended up in a downtown Ottawa garbage can.

The probe was launched after the discovery of blueprints containing sensitive details on the unit.

Anthony Salloum, policy analyst for the left-leaning Rideau Institute, says he and his spouse came upon seven cardboard tubes of blueprints in a pile of trash during a walk on Bank Street on Oct 13.

The documents were stamped with Department of Defence markings and dated March 5, 2007.

Salloum took one tube home and soon discovered he had something important.

His find contained 26 separate blue prints detailing every inch of the new military complex to be housed at CFB Trenton.

"This is very serious," he told CTV News. "These are the schematics of a highly classified anti-terrorism unit built in Trenton."

The other six sets of plans are missing.

The Department of Defence, which sent the blueprints to a number of engineering firms for bids, has not said if the documents are classified.

A military analyst says he's been told the matter is not being considered a security breach because the plans were part of a rejected draft for a new building, which will be the home of the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit at CFB Trenton.

"After (the engineering firm) didn't get it, I assume they just threw the plans in the garbage,'' said Alain Pellerin of the Conference of Defence Associations.

The Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit is the military's first response team in case of a terrorism attack involving nuclear, chemical or biological agents.

"As you can well imagine the government has repeatedly said it's top secret, it's classified, it's national security concerns prevent them from discussing the details of this," Salloum said on CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Life.

"So the irony isn't lost on me that I happened to be walking by on my way to have supper ... and I literally stumble on a garbage bag full of rolled up schematics, with proposals and outlines of existing facilities at Trenton," he added.

The blueprints apparently showed the locations of the:

• Security fence

• Electrical grid

• Sewage system.

• Storage bay for robots used to detect chemical and biological agents

"Basically (the blueprints) give the key to the building to these people," says Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former CSIS agent.

"A trained eye could look at this and obtain quite a lot of sensitive information -- what will be happening in this building, what will be stored in this building."

But Day has warned the public against jumping to conclusions about the contents of the documents until a report comes out.

"We'll wait for the actual report in terms of what exactly these documents are," he said.

"If there is some kind of security breach . . . that's of huge concern. We're going to wait for all the details."

Salloum said he hopes the Department of National Defence reassesses its bids process.

"If that's the biggest thing that comes out of this story, that DND looks at how it tenders these construction projects, and how it deals with bids that aren't successful," he said.

"In terms of laying out procedures for their destruction, whether its deleting files on computers or actually shredding documentation or returning them to DND -- maybe we can see those protocols in place now."

Meanwhile, opposition members pounced on what they said was a major lapse.

"This government is so secretive, it's Mister No Comment," Liberal Defence Critic Coderre said.

"And then they have this shocking lapse."

Coderre called on someone to lose their job over the matter. His NDP counterpart Dawn Black called the situation "absolutely unbelievable."

"It's quite incredible," Black said. "It's kind of a black farce."

In addition to the probe launched by Day, the military has also started its own investigation.

With a report from CTV's Craig Oliver